Adelson Says He Didn’t Authorize Macau Offer to Middleman

April 6 (Bloomberg) -- Sheldon Adelson told a jury he
wasn’t involved in and didn’t authorize an offer that former Las
Vegas Sands Corp. President William Weidner made to a Hong Kong
businessman for a share of the company’s profit in Macau.

Adelson, 79, founder, chairman and chief executive officer
of Sands, testified for a second day in Las Vegas in the trial
over Richard Suen’s claims that he’s owed $328 million for
helping the company win a license in 2002 to operate casinos in
the former Portuguese colony.

This is the second time the claims have gone to trial. The
Nevada Supreme Court in 2010 reversed a $43.8 million jury award
two years earlier in favor of Suen and sent the case back for a
new trial. Suen alleges he had an agreement that he and his
associates would get $5 million and 2 percent of Sands’ Macau
net income if the company was awarded a license.

“I would not have approved this,” Adelson said yesterday
under questioning from Suen’s lawyer, John O’Malley, about a
June 2001 fax Weidner sent to Suen outlining the terms of an
agreement. “I had nothing to do with it.”

Adelson said he was too ill in the fall of 2001, suffering
from a nerve disease that left him in severe pain and unable to
be involved in daily operations of his company. He said Weidner,
who is scheduled to testify next week, was filling in for him
about half of the time during that period and made the offer to
Suen without his authority.

‘Of Course’

“If he could deliver a license without us having to
compete for it, then of course I would have been happy to pay
him,” Adelson said of Suen.

Suen, a business friend of Adelson’s brother Leonard
Adelson, represented he could deliver a license without any
competition if the Macau government ended the monopoly that
Stanley Ho had on gambling in region prior to the handover to
China, the Sands chairman testified.

“That’s what he said,” Adelson told the jury. “Why else
would I deal with this guy?”

Adelson accused Suen, who is sitting with his lawyers, of
smirking at him during his testimony. He also accused Steven
Jacobs, the former chief executive of the Sand China Ltd. who is
also embroiled in a lawsuit with Adelson and who is attending
the trial, of smirking at him from the audience.

“Mr. Jacobs has been smirking since yesterday afternoon,”
Adelson said about the executive he fired in 2010.

Not Relevant

Suen claims that meetings he arranged between Adelson and
Chinese officials, including the mayor of Beijing and the vice
premier responsible for Hong Kong and Macau, were instrumental
in leading Edmund Ho, the former chief executive of the Macau
Special Administrative Region, to award the company a gaming
license in 2002.

Adelson testified that after the Macau government solicited
public offers for gaming concessions in October 2001, the
relationships Suen alleged to have to provide a license were no
longer relevant.

Suen, who Adelson said was in the business of making plush
toys, had no expertise in public relations or finding investors,
Adelson testified. Las Vegas Sands won the right to operate
casinos in Macau, without Suen’s involvement, by joining the bid
of a Hong Kong investor group that got one of the three gambling
concessions awarded in 2002, Adelson said.

A ‘Messenger’

The company had earlier joined forces with a Taiwanese bank
that would finance the casinos in Macau managed by Las Vegas
Sands. When the Macau government rejected that proposal, three
weeks before the winning bids were announced, Las Vegas Sands
was paired, as management company, with Galaxy Entertainment
Group Ltd., the Hong Kong investors.

The venture with Galaxy was set up after Adelson was
approached by a “messenger” he assumed was from Edmund Ho,
Adelson said.

When the venture with Galaxy didn’t work out because the
Hong Kong group didn’t want to disclose its partners, which
turned out to include the son of a reputed “triad member,” the
Macau government allowed Las Vegas Sands to build its own
casinos under a subconcession from Galaxy, Adelson said.

Suen approached him after Las Vegas Sands got the
subconcession in December 2002 seeking compensation for helping
win the right to operate casinos, Adelson said.

“I said you haven’t done anything, why should I pay you
any compensation,” Adelson testified.

Adelson said at the urging of his brother Lenny, he offered
Suen a position as procurement agent so he could “earn a lot of
money.” That offer had nothing to do with Suen’s claim that he
was entitled to be paid for helping to deliver the Macau
subconcession, Adelson said.

Under cross-examination from Las Vegas Sands lawyer Richard
Sauber, Adelson testified he was one of four children of
immigrant parents in Boston who got in the trade-show business
in 1972 after various ventures.

“I would have been a rags-to-riches story except that my
parents couldn’t afford the rags,” Adelson said.